I'm very flattered and honored that you would consider purchasing my tiki. You made my day. But it's not for sale. I may have some pieces for sale at a later time. I'm not sure if I will ever carve another tiki from purple heart due to its difficulty. You will be the first person I contact if I ever carve another one and I consider selling it. My intent for this tiki is to put it in my tiki collection as an unusual rare tiki. I don't think there are very many purple heart tikis that exist. Thanks again.

Today I applied the first of seven coats of 100% tung oil on the tiki. I thinned the first coat 50/50 with mineral spirits so the oil will soak deep into the wood. I probably wont thin the rest of the coats. I like the way it looks and I think it will look even better as the coats of tung oil are applied. The grain will come out even more after it dries for a month.

Thank you. I'm glad you like it. The color should lighten up a little as the tung oil dries. I'll post more pictures as I apply the finish coats. I already have some ideas for my next tiki carving and I have a couple pieces of wood waiting on my work bench. Stay tuned everyone.

Thank you. I'm putting on the third coat of tung oil right now. It looks even better then in the picture. I might not need to apply anymore. The wood is getting pretty saturated already. I'll wait and see how it looks tomorrow night. I'm in northwest Indiana.

Now that the purple heart tiki is finished I'm ready to start another tiki carving. I've been wanting to add a draw knife to my small arsonal of wood carving tools. Here's what I got. This is going to be a very helpful and versatile tool for me.

I don't have much experience with a draw knife. So yesterday I spent some time honing my draw knife skills getting a blank ready for my next carving. I was able to round the front of my rectangular blank and the corners. It was work but I was also able to remove all of the saw marks and the coat of wax. As long as I made careful passes little sanding was needed. Before I had to scrape the wood and do a lot of sanding. The wood is called Chakte Viga. This is going to make a very nice tiki carving. It has a beautiful pumpkin orange color and great grain. It looks more stunning in person then in the picture. The meaning of the face on my purple heart tiki is prosperity. On this next carving I want to do the face that means love, good luck and happiness. The mouth on that design has a smile. The color of this wood also reminds me of the great sunsets on Maui. After a little finish sanding on the wood blank I'll start drawing out my design and start carving.

I started carving the channel for the forehead on the new tiki. This Chakte Viga is easier to carve then purple heart. It has a nice tight grain structure and should take detail carving pretty well. I'm going carve the channel a little deeper and then I'll move onto the next step.

I got some more carving done on my tiki. I got the channels for the eyes carved and I started on the nose. The eyes are going to have a lot more wood taken off so they won't look as large as they do now and they'll be rounded in certain areas. I also got a 12/12 chisel to add to my wood carving tools. I really like this chisel. It's going to be very useful.

I got the eyes contoured and the nose done. This triangular look down style of eye isn't used to often. As a matter of fact I haven't seen it before until recently. A few weeks ago I got a new tiki from Maui to add to my tiki collection and it has eyes like this. I still need to carve the apple wedge shapes into the bottom of the eyes but I'll wait to do that when I do the detail decorative carving. Some very nice grain patterns came out when I started rounding the edges of the eyes. I think this is going to be a very nice tiki when it's finished. One thing I'm learning is that carving these harder exotic woods takes a lot of time. I think it's worth it.